45 Million Users and $162M Raised on Grief Support

01 /The Concept

This startup launched in 2021, and over four years it has reached 45 million users and raised $162 million in total funding – including $72 million just closed.

Empathy is a service that helps people navigate the death of someone close to them.

In those moments, most people are disoriented and uncertain about what needs to happen next. Empathy's app connects them with a personal case manager who helps build a clear action plan – from arranging the funeral through resolving estate matters.

But the real value isn't the plan itself. It's that the case manager helps users actually work through it – offering guidance and hands-on support at every stage.

The app also addresses the emotional dimension: a library of articles and meditations, a hotline for talking with a grief counselor, and a community forum for people who have experienced similar losses.

More recently, Empathy has expanded into estate planning – helping people prepare wills and related documents before death occurs, making it easier for surviving family members to locate accounts and assets and distribute them according to the deceased's wishes.

The problem it's addressing is significant: 67% of American adults have no estate planning documents, and 43% have no advisor who could help them prepare any. Even among those who do have documents, 52% of Americans don't know where their parents store them. And 35% have personally experienced – or know someone who has experienced – inheritance conflicts caused by the absence of proper documentation.

Empathy's advisors and app help people prepare these documents and store digital copies in a secure vault that family members can access through the app after a death.

Empathy reaches users not through direct consumer marketing but through insurance companies, employers, and financial advisors, who include the service in their product offerings, benefits packages, and employee assistance programs.

The business case for employers is concrete: 37% of American employees lose someone close each year, and the resulting grief has a measurable impact on productivity. Companies bear an estimated $100 billion annually in direct and indirect costs. Having access to Empathy cuts those losses by roughly 25%, because the service helps employees resolve practical matters faster and recover emotionally sooner.

More than 5 million American employees have access to Empathy through employer benefit plans. Another 40 million have it through insurance policies.

Empathy was [covered previously](/review/povod-pechalnyj-no-rynok-vechnyj-bolshoj-i-rastushhij) in the spring of last year when it raised its previous $47 million round.

02 /Why It Matters

More than 3 million people die in the US every year. With an average of three to five close survivors per person, that means roughly 10 to 15 million people annually could benefit from Empathy's services. That's a real market – however sad the occasion.

Globally, more than 60 million people die each year, a number projected to exceed 120 million by 2100. The count of affected survivors would then be somewhere between 360 and 600 million.

And the impact extends beyond the bereaved themselves. Their employers pay what Empathy aptly calls a "grief tax." Companies that employ 37% bereaved-at-any-given-time workers – or even a more conservative 11% based on other data sources – still face meaningful productivity losses, because the negative impact on concentration, presence, and output continues on average for 16 months after a loss.

More than 90% of bereaved employees report a sharp drop in focus and productivity. 84% say they've had to miss work to handle practical matters. And 79% have at least seriously considered leaving their current job in light of changed family circumstances.

The greatest burden falls on those who take primary responsibility for managing everything. Their productivity losses stretch to an average of 20 months.

The problem is compounded when the deceased left no estate documents – which is the norm rather than the exception: only 24% of American adults had a will as of 2025.

Several startups focus exclusively on estate planning. Trust & Will ([related review](/review/jeto-vsjo-chto-ostanetsja-posle-menja)) has raised more than $80 million, the majority of it after the earlier review. Leafplanner ([related review](/review/sostojatelnye-i-postojannye-klienty-tut)) raised $1.3 million for a platform that helps people catalog their assets and organize all the documentation their family will need to locate and distribute those assets after death.

03 /Opportunities

As Benjamin Franklin observed, only death and taxes are certain. Yet the financial services industry has produced an enormous ecosystem of tools for planning, tracking, and filing taxes – while death-adjacent services have remained comparatively sparse.

That's likely because death was taboo for a long time – not a topic people wanted to engage with or plan for.

That's changing. Gen Z has developed a notably different relationship with mortality: more direct, less avoidant. Part of this may trace back to the Covid pandemic, which made human fragility impossible to ignore.

As the cultural conversation normalizes, a market is emerging for services that help people prepare for death and manage its practical and emotional aftermath.

So, unusual as the sector sounds, building those services is a real and growing opportunity. Empathy and Trust & Will show what those services can look like at scale.